They offer a couple of ways we could have a founding human pair:
There are a couple ways you could have a founding human pair. One is a slender evolutionary bottleneck. First, ancient apes evolved into proto-humans. Then, due to a migration or catastrophe, a larger population was reduced to two. And from that pair came all humans. A second scenario involves a first human pair created from scratch — Adam and Eve, if you will.
Many Darwinists insist the “Adam and Eve” scenario is wrong because it cannot be reconciled with human genetics. But Gauger and Hössjer say an Adam and Eve model fits with the genetic data they studied.
When testing an Adam and Eve scenario, there’s a follow-up question. Were Adam and Eve genetically similar or dissimilar? Gauger and Hössjer plugged both possibilities into their model. If similar, then the founding couple lived much longer ago. If the first pair were created with genetic diversity built in, then they lived more recently, near the time that Neanderthals appeared on the scene.
Gauger says that her and Hössjer’s work is ongoing. They plan to add other things to their model, including the effects of natural selection.
To learn more about the paper and its back story, go here, here and here. And here. Jonathan Witt , “New Research: Our DNA Doesn’t Rule Out Adam and Eve” at The Stream
Paper. (open access)
Wow. The Darwin trolls’ll miss Halloween to go after this one.
See also: Controversial claim: First humans came from what is now Botswana One is tempted to wonder, how would “storytelling” differentiate the Garvan team from many other human evolution researchers?
and
We could have come from two parents
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